The misfortunes of Mrs Merton: Caroline Aherne's a fighter, and now she's battling again

IT HAS been more than 10 years since Caroline Aherne announced she never wanted to appear on television again.

She has fought depression, drink problems and two earlier bouts of cancer[REX]

Over the intervening years she has made a few exceptions for one-off specials and her voice is currently to be heard as the narrator on Channel 4's Gogglebox but by and large she has stuck to her resolution to stay well away from the limelight.

So it would have to be a very special project to tempt her out of the almost reclusive lifestyle she has chosen to adopt.

And it is.

The Bafta-winning creator of Mrs Merton and The Royle Family has agreed to launch the Macmillan Cancer Improvement Partnership for the purest and yet most selfinterested of reasons. She has revealed she has lung cancer.

It is her third bout of cancer.

She and her older brother Patrick were both born with cancer of the retina.

It was successfully treated although it left Caroline almost blind in one eye and Patrick with only 30 per cent vision in one eye.

Later she developed bladder cancer which was also treated successfully.

The lung cancer was diagnosed late in 2013 and yesterday her brother revealed to the Manchester Evening News that although Aherne had been a long-time smoker, her lung cancer is related to the eye cancer they were both born with.

"The form of lung cancer she is suffering from is genetic and linked to the retinoblastoma she had as a baby," said Patrick.

"Her bladder cancer was also genetic and linked to the retinoblastoma."

For the gifted comedy actress and writer who turned 50 last Christmas Eve it is another blow in a life which for all her talent and success has also dealt her some hard knocks, including depression and alcoholism.

In her view the latter were directly linked to or even caused by the former.

Fiercely intelligent (she has an IQ of 176), she could be tough with BBC executives (she got her way over not filming The Royle Family before a studio audience by threatening to make no more Mrs Merton shows) but dealing with public adulation was another matter.

Certainly Aherne claimed her inability to cope with fame was partly to blame for her attempting suicide in 1998.

She was at the height of her popularity yet inside she was in turmoil.

"Getting used to being famous alone would have been enough but it was like a domino effect.

"I couldn't cope and I wanted to numb it all with drink," she said.

The "domino effect" which she said had left her "sad to the core" began with the death in 1995 of her father Bert, a labourer on the railways who had partly inspired the character of Jim in The Royle Family.

The following year her marriage to Peter Hook, bass player with the band New Order, broke down after only three years.

She took up with TV researcher Matt Bower for a while but after they split he died of cancer in 1997 aged only 27.

Another relationship, this time with actor Alexis Denisof, had also ended a few weeks before the suicide attempt.

In July 1998 Aherne washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with champagne after writing several farewell notes (including one to her dead father) at her home in trendy Notting Hill, West London.

She was close to death when her mother Maureen found her.

Until then Aherne had seemed to take a light-hearted view of her drinking.

"My only alcohol problem is that I get p***** at the wrong dos," she joked, referring to occasions when she had turned up well refreshed at events such as the refreshed at events such as the comedy Awards.

The dialogue she wrote for Denise, her character in The Royle Family included: "I'm not p*****, I've only had nine."

But the suicide attempt was a huge jolt.

"I actually have no recollection of it," she said later.

"Finding out what I'd done was like finding out I'd stabbed 15 people.

"I would never knowingly hurt people in that way.

"I must have been so drunk it was a total blackout.

"They told me it wasn't premeditated because I hadn't gone out and bought tablets.

"I'd taken what was in my medicine drawer.

"Oh, the shame of it and the worry I caused."

She checked into the Priory clinic in Roehampton, south-west London - the rehab centre of choice for celebrities - where she was diagnosed as a binge alcoholic.

Caroline insisted that The Royle Family wasn't filmed in front of a studio audience [PH]

After she was discharged she attended Alcoholics Anonymous where her presence seemed to Come as no surprise.

One man welcomed her by saying, "You're Mrs Merton, aren't you?

"I've been following your career with interest.

"I've been saving a seat for you."

The new millennium saw her at a crossroads.

She had a big row with Crossroads.

She had a big row with her TV co-star and writing partner Craig Cash.

The bouts of depression were still there.

Aherne's solution was radical.

In 2001, she moved to Australia.

"I've realised that if I really want a private life I'll have to be a private person again," she said.

"As long as i'm a TV personality I can't moan about people being interested in my life.

"If I've learned anything it's that I need some space for myself.

"I've done all the things I needed to do and I don't need to prove anything any more."

Poignantly, she also admitted: "I probably wouldn't " be giving it up if I had someone."

So off she went to Sydney where she took up with millionaire businessman Brett Whitford, started drinking again (although not to excess) and wrote Dossa And Joe, an Australian-based sitcom starring Neighbours actress Anne Charleston which bombed when the BBC aired it in 2002.

The relationship with Whitford fared no better and within a year Aherne was back in Britain.

This " time she went back to her Northern roots and to mum.

She sold up in London and moved into a £370,000 house in the Manchester suburb of Timperley, not far from Wythenshawe where she had grown up.

When she socialised it was with a small band of trusted old friends in local restaurants where nobody bothered her.

At last Caroline Aherne had found the peace she had long craved - until another shattering event drew her out into the spotlight again.

She will launch Macmillan's £3.4million plan to improve care for cancer patients next month and is clearly committed to the cause, driven no doubt by the disturbing news that a third more people in Manchester get lung cancer than in the rest of the country while the survival rate for cancer in general is 25 per cent lower.

"Even the best doctors, nurses and managers on earth aren't going to be able to understand what needs improving unless people affected by cancer in Manchester get involved and tell them what needs to change," said Aherne.